Unraveling the Israel Alliance

“Jews in America aren’t endangered, but the power of the religious right has clearly reached a point where a great many feel exceedingly nervous. The fear is not of pogroms or outright discrimination; rather, it’s of the disappearance of the secular civic culture that allowed Jews to feel like full citizens of America rather than a tolerated minority.” Michelle Goldberg of Salon.com watches the troubled union between American Jews and Zionist conservative Christians begin to come undone with the recent proclamations of prominent Jews like Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham Foxman and Union for Reform Judaism president, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, both of whom have denounced the religious right in speeches this month. In response, Goldberg notes, have come the relieved sighs of liberal and moderate Jews long uneasy with the evangelical alliance, but also some fretting about a possible anti-Semitic backlash, and a noticeable divide among American Jewry wherein the culture wars take on “on overtly sectarian cast.”